Masinter's proposal on case

To: common-lisp at SU-AI

Subject: Masinter's proposal on case

From: Scott E. Fahlman <Fahlman at Cmu-20c>

Date: Tue, 31 Aug 1982 14:56:00 -0000

If we were to make Common Lisp case-sensitive, Masinter's proposal to
require every symbol in the white and yellow pages to be lower-case
would be essential to retaining everyone's sanity, but I oppose the
basic suggestion. We might be able to defend the case-purity of the
white and yellow pages, but under this proposal there would still be a
lot of code written in mixed case, and users would still have the problem
of remembering the case of everything. I see two cutlures developing
very quickly, one of which types in lower-case only and the other
capitalizing assorted words, as in ThisIsaReallyUglySymbol. It still
looks like a recipe for chaos to me.
-- Scott